Read Indies: Biblioasis

RECENT READ: Stéfanie Clermont’s The Music Game (2017; Trans. J.C. Sutcliffe, 2022)

This is another of the books read while elevating my battered and bruised knee (with Aaron’s stories). It was Clermont’s debut novel, which is fitting because it’s about young people finding their way and navigating a rapidly changing world. I absolutely loved the opening sections; the workplace setting is one that I know intimately, and the persistent low-level din of customer service responsibilities struck a perfect balance between relentlessness (i.e. credibility) and release.

There she is, at work, our first narrator: “…I felt as though I’d become part of it myself, that I was simply another adorable bud on the verge of blooming, a young shoot engorged with sap, just one more detail among all the charming elements of the Jean Talon Market. I was ornamental. I’d now become something akin to the coffee they offer customers at a car dealership: a nice little touch.”

The tone, the feel of it all, brought to mind the current CBC dramedy “Can You Hear Me?” (M’entends-tu?) about three girlfriends played by Florence Longpré, Eve Landry, and Mélissa Bédard: three young women simply trying to make their way (and make ends meet) in Montreal. (The first two seasons are available on Netflix with English subtitles.)

My challenge here is to discuss the book without focussing on the elements at the heart of my review when the novel is primarily about discovery and orientation, rooted in voice, and with just enough characters to remind us how we view and create ourselves against a backdrop of friendships and fledgling relationships. I don’t want to give anything away, so I’ll settle on the idea that readers get a clear sense of that fog of youthfulness (where inherently ideas contain dichotomies like ‘clarity’ and ‘confusion’) but also a sense of lived-in and vibrant Montreal (and Ottawa). And although it’s about 300 pages long, I read it in only two sessions.

It’s not the kind of story that makes you feel like you need to know what happens—because, actually, very little “happens”—but it’s the kind of storytelling that makes me care about the characters’ daily lives and lifelong dreams.

PS There are a couple of  nifty subscription offers from Biblioasis that I discovered while checking to see if this title is part of their international translation series: the 2022 Literature in Translation Club (this is the first book of 2022’s four) and the 2022 Mystery Box. There are goodies that come with these packages (chapbooks, etc.) and there seems to be some potential for personal curation in the mystery box AND if you order before February is over there is a subscription to CNQ included too, which is one of my favourite literary mags, exceptionally bookish. I don’t know what the fun bonus items are, but *whispers* once I got a numbered, collectible baseball-type card that, instead of having a player, had a second-hand bookseller on it, with details about their store on the back.